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Winter Quarters Reborn

Early in 1848, those members of the Church not yet ready to migrate to the Salt Lake Valley began the task of moving across the river into Iowa, to the Council Bluffs site that would soon be known as Kanesville. As the companies of Brigham Young, with 1,229 souls, and Heber C. Kimball, with 662, left the community that had been home for nearly two years, Brigham wrote: "Winter Quarters, after its vacation by Elder Kimball's company and mine, presented a desolate aspect. A terrific thunderstorm passed over, accompanied by a hurricane which tore wagon covers to shreds and whistled fearfully through the empty dwellings. A few straggling Indians camped in the vacated premises and subsisted on the cattle which had died by poverty, and what they could pick up."

In October, Elder George A. Smith, one of those left in charge of the Iowa settlement, described the abandoned city. He wrote: "The Indians visited it of late and feasted on the potatoes that grew in the old cellars, also on the Indian corn and volunteer squash and such other vegetables as grew without culture. . . . Winter Quarters afforded more flies and fleas than anything less than a star-gazer could well estimate."

It may seem a sad fate for what was once a prosperous city, but, after all, Winter Quarters was born to die. It had been just what its name implied, a winter quarters for the migrating Mormons. Now, the grassy mounds of the burying ground seemed the most enduring memento of the once thriving city.

But there would come a brighter day, after an interval of six years. In January 1854, Senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill organizing Nebraska and Kansas as territories of the United States. This area beyond the Missouri, long considered Indian territory, now would be open to settlement. Senator Douglas's bill established the doctrine of popular sovereignty, and led to a land rush by proslavery and antislavery advocates that would become a violent prelude to the Civil War. The bustling ambitious city of Omaha came into being on the Missouri, a few miles south of old Winter quarters. A newspaper, the Omaha Arrow was soon issued, and in its July 28, 1854, edition, it surveyed prospects for the area:

Winter Quarters is also located up the river some ten miles above this city. It is pleasantly situated on a high bench and inclined plane, giving a fair and pretty view for a great distance around, and is the old site of the "Winter Quarters" of the Mormon Pionners. The town is now being surveyed and improvements and public buildings erected. . . . A flat boat ferry is kept in operation for the benefit of settlers.

On September 9, proprietors of the Nebraska Winter Quarters claim held a meeting at the store of B. R. Pegram and Company, across the river in Council Bluffs. The proprietors drew plans to sell lots in the new community, which had been surveyed and given a new name-Florence, Nebraska. In a fashion still followed by real estate developers today, the new town was named for Florence Kilbourn, an adopted daughter of one of the organizers, James C. Mitchell.